It's a New Dawn, It's a New Day(care)

It's a new life for me…

Don’t forget, you can listen to the audio recordings of each Anchor Baby essay on your podcast app of choice. Go to the Anchor Baby homepage, click on your profile top right, then hit “manage subscription”. Scroll down til you see the option to “set up podcast”. On the Substack app – you should download it so you can join the Anchor Baby chats! – tap the “library” icon on the bottom right, then click into the subscription of choice, tap the three dots on the top right and, again, “manage subscription”. Then each new voiceover will just pop into your podcast app like a new episode of your favourite pod!

I dropped Atlas off to his first half-day of daycare this morning. It’s in a neighbour’s home, three minutes’ walk from ours; I found her through the housing estate Facebook group, which is by and large preoccupied with “for sale” posts and sightings of “suspicious” characters, caught on people’s Ring doorbells.

“This guy walked right up to my front door and looked around,” said one recent post, accompanied by a photograph of a distinctly average-looking man in a short-sleeved shirt, doing just that.

“He clearly doesn’t know this neighbourhood is full of vets,” a commenter remarked. “Next time he tries that he’s gonna get shot.”

I’m not quite sure what “that” is. I thought walking up to someone’s front door was, I don’t know, allowed? Normal? Part and parcel of making deliveries or selling internet plans or who knows what else?! But what do I know, I’m not a vet.

Anyway, there are two at-home daycares in our estate, so I tried both. The first was full, so we ended up at this one, where Atlas will spend two mornings a week playing with strangers’ children and eating snacks provided by someone else and occasionally watching Cocomelon and, crucially, being away from me.

My plan is to work while he’s at daycare. I might record the podcast, which is difficult to do when he’s napping, as my raucous laughter tends to wake him up; maybe I’ll work on some freelance writing; dedicate a few hours to my next book, which I have finally started; write my money diaries. My plan is to make the most of these precious hours.

I dropped him off at 9.30am, making the first of the day’s mistakes by deciding we could walk there. It is, as I said, three minutes away from our house. It turns out that timing is contingent on actually walking in the right direction, on not turning back to run up the driveway; on holding mommy’s hand and walking with her, rather than away from her.

I gave up before we’d even crossed over out of our garden, picking him up and resting him on my hip as I walked, his backpack slung across my back (snacks, nappies, an extra pair of trousers). Within 30 seconds, I was regretting my decision not to bring the buggy. I had, as usual, been overthinking the whole debacle and decided that the sheer discomfort of walking home wheeling an empty buggy was too much for me, and so, the buggy-free life was chosen. Like I said, a big mistake.

His minder is a retired nurse. “I couldn’t take the hours,” she tells me, “and that was before Covid!” There are four other children playing in the house, all pre-kindergarten age. As we walk in the door, they crowd around us. One of them hands Atlas a toy shopping cart. They follow him through the kitchen island as he explores. When he opens a kitchen cabinet, one little boy slams it shut. “No!” he states, with great authority.

“They know the rules!” his minder laughs.

I stay a while as she fills me in on what goes on here. They play with toys; they have lunch; they take a nap a little after noon, which is when I’ll be picking him up. I could let him nap there, but it seems easier to bring him back here, nurse him, let him sleep in his own bed.

“We sometimes watch a little TV before home time, just to help them wind down,” she tells me. “Sometimes Cocomelon, or whatever’s on Disney… maybe a movie.” I tell her it’s all fine. He watches TV at home. We’re not fussy about his screen time, although I’m sure we should be.

She tries, she tells me, to include fruits and vegetables with every meal, but they do a lot of “kids’ foods”. I tell her that’s all fine, too. He likes avocados and strawberries and ate some broccoli, once (but never again), but he also eats chicken nuggets and chips and pasta, all only when he feels like it.

“He’s been funny about eating lately,” I tell her. “Sometimes he’ll eat loads, sometimes he won’t, so we’re trying not to push it, but it’s all fine. If he doesn’t eat, don’t worry about it.”

I wonder if all parents are as relaxed as I am – at least, about food and television. There are other things I’m not relaxed about, like when he’s asleep and the boys start shouting, or Brandin opens the garage door, which is directly beneath his bedroom. “The baby is asleep!” I’ll hiss, as if he’s a Balrog I’m absolutely terrified of awakening. Maybe he is (maybe I am).

When I see my opportunity, I sneak out the front door without saying goodbye. He seemed to sense my imminent departure and had started to hold on to my leg, demand to be lifted up (he doesn’t speak yet, so he just extends his arms and shouts at me, mouth wide open). She distracted him with a Fisher-Price computer and I backed, slowly, out of the house, stopping on the porch for a moment to pet her cat.

“She hasn’t got long left with us,” I’d been told, when I arrived. She is old, thin, rickety on her little legs, but she still lifts her head, purrs a greeting.

I walk home, imagining the agonised roars of Atlas – my baby – when he realises I’m not there any more. I think of the times he cries, really cries, and will not be calmed, and I send her a text.

“I also meant to say,” I tap out. “If he’s crying hysterically and inconsolable, I can come and get him. I know the first few weeks might need to be gradual!”

After all, I think, we haven’t been away from each other much. Just the other day, I went to Rural King and left him with his favourite person, Don, for 45 minutes; when we got back, Don reported that he’d started to bawl crying and would not be calmed. “I think he was looking for you,” he tells me.

Fifteen minutes later, my text is answered. “Actually he hasn’t quit playing,” she tells me. “Hasn’t gone to the door looking for you yet.” She adds a smiley face emoji.

There’s a photograph, too. Atlas is standing in front of the couch, his arms up on the cushions, a toy between his chubby hands.

He’s not even looking at the camera.